UK lawyer twins facing jail in Dubai for ‘drunken insults’ at Arab women
TWO British lawyers who are twin sisters have been charged in Dubai with drunkenly assaulting a policewoman and ‘cursing Arab women’.
Alena and Sasha Parker, 37, could face up to three years’ in jail in the strict Gulf state if they are convicted.
The twins, from London, both work at a Dubai law firm, and are glamourous fixtures on the social scene there.
Photographs posted online show them partying during nights out and posing in bikinis in the sunshine.
On August 4 last year, they were arrested for ‘roguish behaviour’ on a night out, Dubai Misdemeanours Court heard on Monday.
Alena Parker, an associate at Al Safar & Partners, and her sister, the law firm’s case manager, had been found drunk in the Al Barsha district, it was claimed.
‘A police patrol dispatched to the location found the two intoxicated British [legal] advocates were behaving outrageously,’ according to police records.
Alena Parker had apparently injured her hand and was ‘being treated in an ambulance car by paramedics, while the other sister was standing outside the ambulance and shouting’, said the records.
But when the sisters ‘refused to cooperate with the policeman’, he called for a female colleague to guard them while he fetched handcuffs.
The policewoman told prosecutors: ‘They surprisingly attacked me, and I don’t know why.
‘They assaulted me and pushed me down on the floor… I fell down and injured my head and elbow.
‘While they were being taken for an alcohol test, they cursed me and cursed Arab women.
‘One of them also scratched my hand with her nails.’ Three policemen and a lieutenant also gave evidence, which it is claimed corroborated the policewoman’s statement.
The sisters pleaded not guilty to charges of ‘insulting, resisting arrest by and physically assaulting a policewoman’ at the hearing before judge Urfan Omar. They have been released on bail until a full hearing of the court.
Yesterday they were unavailable for comment but a spokesman at their law firm said they denied all the accusations.
Alena Parker, who has lived in the Gulf state and worked at the firm since 2007, studied law at the University of London and University of Westminster between 2002 and 2007, her CV shows.
She specialises in commercial and property disputes.
Sasha Parker has posted dozens of pictures on social media showing the identical sisters at pool parties, posing with fast cars and enjoying the sunshine.
They would not be the first to have run into trouble with Dubai’s strict morality laws.
Expatriates have frequently been arrested on drunkenness charges in the Arab state, where alcohol is banned in all but licensed premises.
In 2016, a 25-year- old married Briton told authorities there she had been raped, which led to her being arrested on charges of extramarital sex and thrown in jail for several days before the case was dropped.
The same year, a British man was fined £50,000 and jailed after using WhatsApp to insult a woman, who then lodged a complaint with the police.
And last year, 27-year-old Jamie Harron from Stirling, Scotland, was given three months in prison for accidentally touching another man’s hip.
But, after an outcry in the following days, the case was dropped and he was freed.
‘Behaving outrageously’